Thomas Pynchon’s “Mason & Dixon” — about the historical Mason and Dixon, who surveyed the line between Pennsylvania and Maryland in the 1700s — was singled out by Harold Bloom as the most “sublime” novel of the century. It’s also a fascinating example of how a (the?) postmodern author uses trickery to create the emotional impact we typically desire from fiction.
While it might be Pynchon’s most straightforward novel (read about the reviews here), “Mason & Dixon” is episodic and full of absurdity, including talking dogs, talking clocks, talking shoes and life-threatening cheeses. To help me with the simple facts of the narrative, I have been reading the helpful episode summaries on Wikipedia, which is also where I found links to the original reviews. This blog will be my reading journal, commenting as I go.
1: Latitudes and Departures
Part One comprises the first 25 chapters, mainly concerning Mason and Dixon’s attempt to record the Transit of Venus. The final chapter concludes with their departure to America to survey the area that would eventually be named for them.
The style of the novel is striking, full of punctuation and diction and misspellings that imitate 18th-century prose. Here is one of my favorites:
Mr. LeSpark, one of seemingly thousands of minor characters, rebukes Ethelmer for an irreverent comment about the resurrection of Jesus. LeSpark says, “In this house we are simple folk, and must labor to find much amusement in Joaks about the Savior” (76). Misspelling “jokes” in this sentence is Pynchon’s metajoke — a Joak about a joke. What is the impact? It undercuts the potential sentimentality of the line, the author winking at the reader. And yet it somehow seems to emphasize LeSpark’s own sincerity. I’m thinking, “The poor guy doesn’t know that he can’t spell ‘joke’ correctly,” and yet he doesn’t spell anything; it’s spoken aloud, not written. This kind of postmodern complexity is a hallmark of this novel.
For the purpose of this blog post, I’ll define “Joak” as a Pynchonesque absurdity that leads to, and perhaps makes possible, the sublime, profound moments of sincerity.
I’ll begin in chapter 9, in which Johanna Vroom attempts to seduce Mason by ripping her bodice “in two, or, actually, in twain” (another hilarious anachronism). We are then led into the consciousness of a “Darkling Beetle.” I think the absurdity of this chapter has been established already, no? Then comes the payoff of the Joaks, when we learn the Beetle has never seen rain before, “tho’ now it can feel something undeniably on the way, something it cannot conceive of, perhaps as Humans apprehend God,— as a Force they are ever just about to become acquainted with….” (88). How did we go from ripped bodices and sentient beetles to a sincere observation about the elusiveness of understanding God? Pynchon perhaps believes that sincerity itself is a thing of the past, something only approachable through a faux-18th-century encyclopedic novel. Regardless, he is delivering that sincerity to us now, even in a postmodern age.
There are many examples of Joaks leading to profound observations.
Revd Cherrycoke, our unreliable narrator throughout, tells of an attack on the ship the Seahorse, which he may or not have actually been on, and his young listeners are enthralled. They ask if he swung on a rope with a knife in his teeth, like a pirate?
“Of course. And a pistol in me boot,” the Revd says. He’s lying, of course, but then, isn’t this whole novel — and every novel — a lie? While we’re distracted by this metafictional Joak, the Revd then touches on a touching observation of the nature of children: “One reason Humans remain young so long, compar’d to other Creatures, is that the young are useful in many ways, among them in providing daily, by way of the evil Creatures and Slaughter they love, a Denial of Mortality clamorous enough to allow their Elders release, if only for moments at a time, from Its Claims upon the Attention.” Pynchon’s childishness may serve the same purpose, allowing adult readers an escape into childlike wonder, which serves to press back upon our own mortality.
The Revd (styled throughout the novel with the “d” as a superscript — another anachronistic flourish) continues with his musings on God in a sort of epigraph to chapter 10: “As Planets do the Sun, we orbit ’round God according to Laws as elegant as Kepler’s. God is as sensible to us, as a Sun to a Planet. Tho’ we do not see Him, yet we know where in our Orbits we run,— when we are closer, when more distant,— when in His light and when in shadow of our own making…. We feel as components of Gravity His Love, His Need, whatever it be that keeps us circling” (94).
Here, the Joak is that this is an excerpt from the Revd’s “Unpublished Sermons.” How is this guy a reverend, anyway? And is it still unpublished if it’s in “Mason & Dixon”? Of course, it never existed, but then again, can we ever be sure about the “facts” of history?
While we run around, chasing Pynchon’s tail, we can’t forget the sincere ponderings of the Revd’s words, a searching attempt to understand God. Perhaps they’re unpublished because no one, even then, wanted to read them? And yet, what a lovely metaphor for our relationship to God: always in His orbit, seemingly following a set of laws. Can we truly sense something when we are closer to God and when we are farther apart? If so, how?
Later in this chapter, Mason and Dixon talk about the “mystickal” power of the Transit of Venus, the phenomenon they were sent to observe. It seems that the alignment of planets and stars has also effected a “turning of Soul” among the slave-owning locals. Dixon asks Mason, “have tha felt it,— they’re beginning to talk to their Slaves? Few, if any, beatings” (100). Dixon then talks about “the first time it happened to me” and tries to teach Mason how to experience such a “turning of Soul.” The Joak here is that they fuss about whether to wear a hat or not. Dixon says, “Aye, the Spirit ever fancies a bonny Hat” (101). Now that we have relieved the tension building toward sincerity, we can safely observe their searching for the divine. Dixon continues: “the fairly principal thing, is to sit quietly…?” Mason replies, “That’s it? Sit quietly? And Christ…will come?”
I can’t think of many novels that describe an earnest pursuit of heavenly revelation in such an affecting way. Who would have thought it would come from Pynchon? Mason is so earnest that he “contrives to sit in some shutter’d room, as quietly as he knows how, waiting for a direct experience of Christ” (101). But, like many of us, he can’t sit still very long; “he keeps jumping up, to run and interrupt Dixon, who is trying to do the same, with news of his Progress.” Instead, we descend into slapstick as Mason ends up falling asleep, and his chair “topples with a great Crash,” while Dixon slips out to “see what the Cape Outlawry may be up to” (101). We are left to feel some disappointment that they didn’t achieve their goal of communing with Christ. Would this scene have been possible in contemporary fiction without the Joaks?
In addition to writing about God, Pynchon also writes warmly about love — with the aid of more Joaks. Mason has left his home, including his two young sons, in part because of his grief for his wife, Rebekah. Chapter 16 begins: “Here is what Mason tells Dixon of how Rebekah and he first met. Not yet understanding the narrative lengths Mason will go to, to avoid betraying her, Dixon believes ev’ry word….” (167). With an intro like that, how are we to take the following chapter, as the reader? Here’s what happened to me …
First, the Joak. It’s a long one, lasting about five pages, and it’s all about a crowd gathering to observe, with “Scientifick” curiosity (171), the largest piece of cheese in the kingdom. Mason, apparently not wanting to appear cheesy about his feelings for Rebekah, instead tells about a literal cheese in a fabricated anecdote to Dixon. The details are so authentic that I began to forget that first paragraph of the chapter that had warned me it would be a Joak. It ends when Revd Cherrycoke is interrupted in the telling of Mason’s anecdote (almost certainly, the Revd is putting words in Mason’s mouth as he does so, since he wouldn’t have been present when Mason presumably said it). Now that we are, again, sufficiently dizzy, Pynchon gets to work.
Rebekah as a “plainly visible Phantom attends Mason [ … ] at her most vital and belov’d.” Mason thinks of these appearances as merciful, not as a hauntings. “Is this, like the Bread and Wine, a kindness of the Almighty, sparing him a sight he could not have abided?” (171). This is a fascinating interpretation of the sacrament: Pynchon (or the Revd Cherrycoke) calls the bread and wine “a kindness of the Almighty,” meaning that, by eating and drinking, Jesus’ mourners could be comforted with pleasant reminders of his body and blood, rather than grisly images of his crucifixion. In the same way, Rebekah, who is worshiped in a sense as a ghost, makes Mason feel “pleasurably helpless.”
In the next chapter, Mason departs from the enormous cheese that threatens his life as it rolls down the hill, and instead Mason goes to visit a shrine in which the ear of a former East India Company employee is pickled, preserved as a relic. (What?) Mason is invited to make a wish, which the ear will only listen to, not grant. The initial response to the absurdity of this Joak is Mason’s earnest desire: “that Rebekah live” (179). But we learn in this passage that Mason loves not only Rebekah but also his friend Dixon; he ultimately wishes not for Rebekah but for Dixon’s safety, “For his personal sake, of course, but for my Sanity as well.” He misses Dixon! They’re buddies! And we believe it.
The two men are reunited at the conclusion of Part One, and one little word confirms their friendship: Mason refers to them as “us” (247), and Dixon “Smile[s] acknowledging the Pronoun” (248). They continue their spiritual conversation, as Dixon seems to be consoling Mason over his grief, reassuring him that there is “a part of thy Soul that doesn’t depend on Memories, that lies further than Memories” (253).
That’s chapter 25, but before concluding my responses to Part One, I would be remiss not to mention the greatest passage, which is in chapter 20. Here, Mason visits his children to say goodbye before he leaves for America and his next job, with Dixon. Mason flashes back to his youth, when his father was a baker. Mason once took a nap on a “risen raw Loaf for a pillow,” and the cells in the dough speak to him, saying: “Remember us to your Father” (205). Again, we see the pattern of a Joak followed by a sincere, profound, often theological exploration.
The response to this Joak is another nonstory: Just as Mason’s cheese anecdote was made up, his father “wants” to give Mason some advice about leaving his children behind. He doesn’t give the advice, but if he were to give it, here is what he’d say: “What happens to men sometimes [ … ] is that one day all at once they’ll understand how much they love their children, as absolutely as a child gives away its own love, and the terrible terms that come with that,— and it proves too much to bear, and they’ll not want it, any of it, and back away in fear” (205-206).
Just as the postmodern writer can’t come out and tell us a universal truth, so Mason’s father can’t bring himself to tell his son these difficult truths of fatherhood. And so, Mason leaves his children behind for another years-long expedition, and he doesn’t come to any reconciliation with his own father, either.
And yet, fictionally, Mason’s father “keeps trying.” He adds on to the advice he never gave, this time with a prose poem about the only thing he knows well, which is bread. It also echoes the previous lines about the bread and wine, the relationship between the Father and Son. Mason’s father says: ” ‘Tis all one thing. From field to Mill-stone, to oven. All part of Bread. A Proceeding. There’d be naught to knead or bake without this.’ He gestures toward where the Stones move in their Dumbness and Power,— ‘The Grinding, the Rising, the Baking, at each stage it grows lighter, it rises not only in the Pans but from the Earth itself, being ground to Flour, as Stones are ground to Dust, from that condition taking in water, then being fill’d with Air by Yeasts, finding its way at last to Heat, rising each time, d’ye see, until it be a perfect thing.’ Picking up a Loaf and holding it to his face. Young Mason thinks he is about to eat it.”
These lines are devastating. Encyclopedic, lyrical.
We don’t know whose point of view we are following — the Revd, Mason, Mason’s father, Pynchon — but it doesn’t matter. The Joak has brought us where we want to be: to the sublime, “a perfect thing.”
